The Love That Had No Name

Amy Bloom’s new novel, White Houses, imagines the bittersweet romance between Eleanor Roosevelt and journalist Lorena Hickok, as well as an enviably modern and open marriage between a president and first lady

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BY MARY KAYE SCHILLING

FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS A rare press shot of Hickok with Roosevelt (and Paul Pearson, governor of the Virgin Islands) on a trip in 1934, two years into their romance. Hickok was often cut out of such photos.

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IT’S HARD TO UPSTAGE A FIGURE AS SAINTED as Eleanor Roosevelt, but author Amy Bloom has found a voice if not as saintly then certainly as memorable: Eleanor’s onetime lover and lifelong friend, the tough-minded journalist Lorena Hickok. Their romantic relationship, actively erased by the press in their lifetime, remained in the shadows until Susan Quinn’s 2016 dual biography, Eleanor and Hick: The Love Affair That Shaped a First Lady.

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THE FALL OF KING BIBI?
When Benjamin Netanyahu visited Washington earlier this month, it should have been a political triumph, a moment of exultation. For most of his twelve years in power, the hawkish Israeli prime minister was forced to work with presidents who despised him, left-leaning Democrats who talked about settlements and Palestinian statehood. Now, he has Donald Trump. Their March 5 meeting at the White House was the first since the U.S. announced plans to relocate the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem this spring. Israeli politicians had long demanded the move; Netanyahu was the one to deliver it. And yet the whole trip was spoiled from the start. Hours before Netanyahu met with Trump, Israelis learned that one of the prime minister’s closest advisers had turned against him. Nir Hefetz, a former journalist, has been described as “Netanyahu’s spin doctor,” the man responsible for massaging press coverage of the first couple. But after Hefetz’s arrest in February, he agreed to turn state’s evidence and hand over recordings of the Netanyahus discussing an alleged criminal conspiracy. If a series of corruption scandals force Netanyahu out of office, he will leave behind a country that is deeply, perhaps irreparably, divided.